


Weird Little Greasepit - Sophomore Year - April

by appending_fic



Series: Weird Little Greasepit - Sophomore Year [8]
Category: Buddy Thunderstruck (Cartoon), Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Family History, Grave Robbers, History, Mae Borowski Tomb Raider, Pirates, Secret Societies, Spring Break, Treasure Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 15:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16140122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appending_fic/pseuds/appending_fic
Summary: Every spring break, Muncie Thunderstruck and Kristin Weaselton go hunting for the Lost Treasure of Captain Nobeard. This year is no different.





	Weird Little Greasepit - Sophomore Year - April

On the first Monday of spring break, Kristin Weaselton, as she had for the last six years, knocked on the Thunderstrucks’ door, and, on seeing Muncie, announced, “Come on, loser, we’re going treasure hunting!”

Muncie wished she could blame this on Kristin, but it had been ten-year-old Muncie Thunderstruck who had been entranced by the story of Captain Nobeard, dread pirate and first non-native settler of Greasepit, and their fantastical buried treasure. She’d been the one to drag Kristin and Artichoke out into the woods on the hopes of discovering wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

Artichoke didn’t join them anymore, but Kristin brought new leads every spring break, and for all it meant early mornings and getting lost in the woods, it was fun. With senior year looming ahead, Muncie appreciated having something silly to do for a week. Besides, she could use a break from her cousin’s shenanigans.

So she grabbed her coat and followed Kristin to her car, stretching out in the passenger’s seat. “So, what’s the plan this year?”

“Okay, so last month I was at the arcade, playing Polybius-“

“Oh lord, please don’t tell me we’re following a lead you got from Handsome Joe.”

Kristin scowled and folded her arms against her chest. “Just because he’s crazy doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Sweetheart, that is _exactly_ what it means.” But Muncie felt a twinge of guilt at the wavering of Kristin’s lip and relented. “But I don’t have any better ideas, so let’s hear it.”

Kristin bounced up in her seat, grinning, making it all but certain Muncie had just been played. “Anyway it wasn’t a lead from him, exactly. He mentioned some old papers he lost, and it twigged me to one place we’ve never looked for answers in - The Greasepit Historical Society.”

Muncie rolled that idea around a few times. It was unusually sensible for Kristin, and not even remotely reckless.

“Huh.”

“You like it.”

“Better than your idea last year.”

Kristin looked a little worried. “I said I-“

“Still got five stitches and my arm in a cast for a week.”

“Okay. But. Historical Society. Good idea?”

“At least it won’t involve digging through anyone’s garbage.”

Six hours later, Muncie was reconsidering approving this plan. True, neither of them was bleeding or breaking out in a rash, and no one had shot at them.

But the reason that was true was that this was _boring_. Muncie began to suspect she looked forward to her friends’ damn-fool adventures more than she’d assumed; being the voice of reason had made her forget that there was something in actual excitement.

Shutting off the microfiche machine, Muncie decided to go find Kristin. The weasel in question was digging through pages of old photos, and when she saw Muncie, gave her a wide grin.

“Did you have any luck? Because I hit the _jackpot_.”

“With what? Pictures?”

Kristin shrugged. “Sort of. See, I was looking at stuff from the original founders of Greasepit, here-“ She shoved one of the photos to Muncie. They were grainy, depicting a group of creatures standing in front of an old building with signage declaring it ‘City Hall’.

“Okay, what am I looking for?”

Kristin swung a magnifying glass over the photo, specifically over the lapel of one of the creatures. There was something there, a pin or something; Muncie squinted but still couldn’t make it out.

“Okay, I give.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s basically a smudge. But I kept seeing a pin on later pictures of the City Council. Here-“

Kristin then displayed an array of photographs, each depicting the leaders of Greasepit. In each, she’d singled out one creature wearing a pin, similar in appearance, and in the clear images in the more modern photos, identical in design.

A hammer, like one-half of the hammer-and-sickle, vibrant blue against a brown background.

“What...are we looking at?”

Kristin gave Muncie a smug, triumphant grin. “That’s the flag of Nobeard. More than that, I think it’s the sign of some secret society.”

Muncie felt a chill along her spine. The Cult of the Black Goat had been _nasty_ business; the last thing they needed was another secret society. “What… _kind_ of secret society?”

“I _think_ they’re an offshoot of the Masons. One of them was accused of being a Communist in the 50’s, and all she’d say was, ‘a hammer without a sickle is an entirely different beast altogether.’”

“Hm.” It was...well, it wasn’t a lot. It was practically nothing. But it was _something_ , and even if it turned out to have nothing to do with Nobeard, it was bound to be interesting.

And speaking of secret societies…

“I think I know where we can find more about this,” she announced. “Moneybags has a whole stack of books in his office, and I’ve seen one very relevant to our interests. The Incomplete History of Secret Societies.”

Kristin nodded. “Hm. A thought. Hey, give me your phone.”

Muncie was already unlocking it, but asked anyway. “Why?”

“Calling someone.” Kristin poked at the phone. “Hey, Darnell! It’s Kristin. Yeah, I was wondering if you had Mae Borowski’s number.” She paused, nodding. “None of your business is what. What? No, don’t ask Buddy - hiiii. No. No. No. That only happened _once_! Yeah. Thanks.” She grinned at Muncie, tossing the phone back as it buzzed, and there it was. Mae’s number. Or _a_ number, at least.

“Come on,” Kristin pleaded. “We’ve only got a couple days.”

Muncie sighed and called. It rang once.

“Hi, would you like to upgrade your cable package?”

“What?”

There was a pause on the other line. “You sound familiar,” the recipient said thoughtfully. 

“Yeah, it’s Muncie. Thunderstruck? Is this Mae?”

“Oh, yeah! Thought you were from like an insurance company or something. Answering the phone like that throws them off sometimes.”

“Huh. Yeah. Look, Mae, I’ve got a proposition for you. Kristin Weaselton and I need some help on a project of ours.”

"Wait - oh my god. Is this your secret treasure hunting expedition?"

"Sec - yeah." Muncie shrugged at Kristin. "We realized we're missing a few key skills, and your name came up. You free right now?"

" _Fuck_ yes."

"Okay, give us fifteen minutes." Muncie hung up her phone. "She's in."

"Oh my gosh we are going to find the lost treasure of Captain Nobeard."

Muncie wanted to point out this was baseless optimism; they'd been doing this for six years and hadn't found anything. But it wasn't hurting anyone, and it _did_ help hype up Mae on the way to the school. And it gave Muncie a reason _not_ to point out that when her cousin had broken into the school, he'd found Principal Moneybags consorting with dark forces.

"Soooo," Kristin said as they looked up at the school from the parking lot, "do we pick a lock, or-"

"Have you _seen_ the chains they stick on those doors?" Mae retorted. "No, we're doing this the old-fashioned way - through the second-story windows."

Mae made short work of the mere ten feet between her and the second story, and, once inside a classroom, angled a mess of fabric out the window for Muncie and Kristin to climb.

"...This is the flag from the bio lab," Muncie said.

"Yeah, and?" Mae replied. "It's sort of awkward, and having two people climbing it isn't going to make it any lighter."

On that note, Kristin scrambled up while Muncie considered her options. "I'm pretty sure this is illegal."

Mae snorted. "If we get arrested it'll be for breaking and entering, not defacing the American flag. Besides, the only people who care about defacing the flag are old people and fascists."

It wasn't the most well-reasoned argument, but as staying on the ground while Mae and Kristin got up to shenanigans would clearly be the boring option, climbed up to join them.

The abandoned school was sort of anticlimactic, just empty and quiet, though the silence made Muncie a little afraid to make noise at all. Mae, though, wasted no time hopping on top of the lockers and following Muncie and Kristin along the hall to Principal Moneybags' office. On arriving, she crouched down and gave them a too-wide grin.

"So. What's the plan?"

Muncie pointed at the door, and Mae's face fell. "Oh. That is...more Gregg's area of expertise. _Mine_ is second-story work."

In another world, on another day, Muncie might have given the whole thing up as a bad job. But Kristin was certain they were making progress, and Mae was delighted to be included. So Muncie kicked the door as hard as she could, at doorknob level. The door bent with the first blow, but smashed open at the second. Muncie ignored Kristin's and Mae's shocked looks and strode into Principal Moneybags' office. There _was_ , in fact, a book called 'The Incomplete History of Secret Societies' in his office, but it was thick, heavy, and had no index.

Muncie huffed and glanced at the broken door. There hadn't been any outcry from her impromptu vandalism, but she was certain Principal Moneybags would be more upset if he found this book missing rather than the broken door.

"Try not to touch anything," she commanded. "I'm going to try to find this hammer thing in here."

The book was full of tiny writing set next to diagrams, pictures, so although Muncie was certain it would be easy to identify the emblem she was looking for, it would still take awhile.

"Huh." Muncie glanced up to find Mae flipping through another book, one untitled and bound in moleskin.

"I told you not to touch anything."

"Yeah, but-" Mae waved the book at Muncie. "Principal Moneybags has a book full of all sorts of supernatural shit. Like listen to this: 'The siren's song may be countered by music that has sufficiently powerful hold on an individual - I am uncertain whether it varies from siren to siren or victim to victim, but Toto's Africa has shown success in this area. I have detailed the lyrics and melody on the next page as a precaution.' He's got stuff in here about witches, chimeras, gorgons…"

"Yeah, well, put it back." Muncie turned a page and grinned. "Besides, we've got our lead."

The Vulcan Society were...not entirely offshoots of the Masons, but they did follow the teachings of a creature called The Great Mason - a sort of troubleshooter for life, who encouraged his followers to do the same. About half of the group wandered the world, setting right what had gone wrong, and the rest went into politics. There was a list of confirmed or purported members of the society, among them being-

"Captain Nobeard," Kristin breathed reverently.

"Yeah, but it doesn't give us any hint where their treasure might be."

"Huh. I've _seen_ that symbol before."

Muncie, having forgotten there was another person on this expedition, jumped. She tried to offer Mae a nonchalant look. "Where?"

“Me and - an old friend used to hang out by the cemetery and there’s a tomb with that hammer thing over it.”

“Come on, let’s go!”

And Muncie would have protested, but they were on a roll, lead after lead falling into their laps, so led a triumphant party down to her car, not stopping to do more than close the door to Principal Moneybags’ office. She even let Kristin pick the music.

Being mid-afternoon, the cemetery wasn’t as foreboding as it could have been. But Greasepit had a long history of dramatics, so it had its fair share of tombs and crypts, which led an unnerving air to their exploration.

Mae was almost bouncing as she led them to an unassuming tomb - a squat building set near the edge of the cemetery, marked with, as she’d claimed, the hammer of the Vulcan Society.

And a name.

“Prudence Moneybags?”

“I mean, we broke into his office anyway, we might as well break into his great-grandmother’s grave,” Kristin reasoned.

“What? No grave-robbing!”

“Then why are we here?” Mae had taken Muncie’s distraction to clamber to the roof of the late Moneybags’ tomb, where she was crouching, looking for all the world like a gargoyle. “Dragging us out to a graveyard looking for signs of secret societies - that spells grave-robbing to me.”

Muncie sighed. She was beginning to suspect that she hung out with people like Kristin and Mae because she wanted people around to goad her into going against her better judgment. But it didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.

“Okay, but can we try to find a way in that doesn’t involve breaking down the door?”

“We can _try_ ,” Mae agreed, “but odds are we’re gonna need to smash our way in.” She shifted a little, stumbled, and, in order to keep herself from falling, caught the edge of the hammer carving above the door.

It swung with her before settling into place with a loud click.

“Oh, I bet that did something,” Mae said, hanging from the twisted hammer carving. Then the door of the tomb swung open silently. "Cool!"

"Wait, no, Mae-" Muncie didn't even get to finish her thought before Mae dropped to the ground and bounced into the tomb. Cursing her friends, who were going to get themselves or her killed, Muncie followed her, with Kristin bringing up the rear.

No traps or tripwires immediately put them in danger, so Mae was already poking at decorations, several sealed boxes, including-

"Okay, we're _not_ opening Grandma Moneybags' actual coffin."

"Pffffff," Kristin retorted. "This might be the only time in my life I break into someone's grave-"

"Oh my god! Have _any_ of you seen a movie where pestering a corpse ends well?"

Mae shrugged from where she was trying to twist around a lighting sconce. "Come on, we're not going to be better off _just_ breaking in."

"Technically," Kristin said, "since we found a secret door, we didn't break anything."

"Yeah, well, let's take this 'dishonoring the dead' thing one step at a time." Muncie took a few cautious steps around the crypt, trying to find something that looked out of place, not willing to risk disturbing Prudence's final resting place more than they had. There wasn't, as she vaguely hoped, a prominent sign of Vulcan anywhere, although there _were_ three statues of angels at the far end of the crypt. Muncie gave the statues, who stood with hands outstretched, a few wary looks before deciding to investigate.

"Hey, Kristin, take a look."

"What? Oh, jeez." Kristin took a hesitant step toward the statues. "Are you still freaked out by these things?"

" _Yes_ ," Muncie snapped. "They don't look _natural_!" The way angels looked like you took a perfectly ordinary person and stripped away every part of them that made them unique, a smooth, hairless face without scales or fangs or _anything_ , gave her the _creeps_.

The way they concealed a horrifying power behind such an unassuming smile.

"Yeah, well," Kristin poked the nearest statue to no effect. "We could close our eyes or-"

" _Fuck_ , no! Just check out the statues, okay?"

Muncie retreated to watch as Kristin prodded and examined the statues. Thankfully, they didn't react, even when Kristin shoved one. "Okay, that's enough."

"Nuh-uh," Mae interjected, "there's some Zelda-level bullshit going on here."

"What?"

Mae walked up to the statues and pointed at the hands of the first, down and spread out. Then she pointed at the third, whose hands were down and spread out. And then the middle, which had one hand down and out, and the other...held in a loose fist. Such that something could be held within it.

"I'm gonna go out on a limb, here," Muncie offered, "and say, hammer?" There was a quiet pause, during which the other girls made no response. "And we came looking for the Vulcan Society and didn't think to bring a hammer."

Thirty minutes and one trip to Ziel's later, they stood before the middle angel. Mae had the hammer, and Muncie was standing behind Kristin. 

"Okay, let's see what this fucking does." Mae stepped up and slipped the hammer into the angel's grasp. "Okay, give it a second - whoop!" The floor underneath them fell away, sending all three of them tumbling down. After a moment, it slanted back up, so while they were falling, it was more an uncontrolled slide.

Muncie was pretty sure the other two were cheering, but _she_ was screaming because an unexpected drop onto a slide into the uninhabited bowels of the earth.

…

Wait.

What if they _weren't_ uninhabited?

The slide dropped them in an undignified heap at one end of a long room that ended in an open doorway. It was made of heavy stone blocks, giving the room a heavy, ominous look.

Kristin was up first, making a circuit of the room while Mae made a beeline for the far end, where she paused.

"Uh."

"What?" Muncie scrambled up, intent on getting there before Mae did anything stupid.

"Though behind are the secrets I took with me to the grave, no one shall enter without facing certain death."

"Alright, then we're leaving before one of us gets killed-"

"Wait," Kristin interrupted. "It doesn't say 'no one', it says 'no man'."

" _Awesome_!"

" _Wait_ -"

But it was too late, Mae had already crossed the threshold into the hallway beyond. When she didn't immediately die, she turned and gave them both a thumbs up.

"I'm beginning to like Grandma Moneybags," Kristin said as she joined Mae. She paused, looking back at Muncie. "You coming?"

"You two are going to give me a heart attack," Muncie grumbled as she followed them. The door opened into a short curved hallway, and then another room, this one small, holding just a large chest. Mae was hopping up and down as they entered, and Muncie sighed.

"Go ahead, we haven't died _yet_."

"Yes!"

Mae yanked the chest open and gasped.

"What?"

"I don't know! It's _stuff_!"

"Treasure?" Kristin guessed.

"No…" Mae pulled out a stack of thick papers. "They look like...pictures?"

They were, in fact, paintings, sketches, of a group of creatures standing on a ship, on the beach, just wherever. Front and center of every picture was a sheep in an eyepatch.

"And look! There's a couple of ship manifests and a - 'right to harry and harass the Spaniards for the sake of the Crown…' What?"

"It's a letter of marque," Muncie replied absently.

"Made out to Prudence Moneybags - Grandma Moneybags was a _pirate_!"

"Grandpa Moneybags was _Captain Nobeard_. Look." Muncie pointed at one of the pictures, where the sheep was hanging from a mast on which was a flag with a prominent hammer over the image of the skull.

"But no treasure?" Kristin asked.

"Some people'd say this is better than treasure," Muncie replied. "It's like historical crap. We could turn this over to the historical society, get our names on little plaques, the whole kit and caboodle."

"That's _not_ better than treasure," Mae retorted. "Though it _is_ cool." She looked over at the pictures before digging in the chest. "No treasure maps, either."

"You have to admit it's cool, right, Kristin?"

"Yeah," Kristin sighed. "Just would've been nice to find real treasure."

"Maybe the story of Captain Nobeard was the real treasure all along," Mae offered.

"That's bullshit and you know it, Borowski."

"Sure, but how else are you going to make it sound like we aren't nerds who couldn't manage to find one golden doubloon?"

"...Let's just go home."

\---

Belvedere Moneybags landed with a neat somersault at the bottom of the slide before walking sedately to the note beside the open doorway. Having grown up hearing tales of Granny Moneybags, he’d known no man would be able to get in here safely. But now that the wards were broken…

He hadn’t been certain Pirate Week, held years ago to inspire interest in Greasepit’s most famous resident, would pay off. But this whole year had seen _many_ pieces falling into place.

He paused next to Granny’s warchest, which Thunderstruck and her delinquent friends had already plundered.

Shaking his head, Belvedere closed the lid. Then he withdrew a ring from his pocket. Though his heirloom and birthright, he dared not wear it in public, not after the...unpleasantness with the Vulcan Society.

The signet ring, set with the image of a hammer, fit into a depression beneath the chest’s latch. Belvedere allowed himself a brief smile before he pressed and twisted. And then he reached over the chest and swung it _toward_ him, exposing the compartment beneath the main one.

And there, set within glass to protect it from the elements, was a piece of paper. It looked like a page torn from a book, and on it, written in a steady hand, was the secret to Granny Moneybags’ success. How she had conned a letter of marque from every naval power, escaped any prosecution for her crimes, and left her family the fortune on which they’d lived ever since.

He allowed an indulgent smile for those who imagined jewels and gold buried somewhere.

The _real_ treasure was learning.

Like, for instance, Captain Nobeard’s treasure would teach him how to get back the power that had been unfairly stripped from him.

And then? He could do whatever he liked.

**Author's Note:**

> I PD VZ MPE


End file.
